Oceanic Research: November 2007

With support from NAI Teams at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and UC Berkeley, researchers at the American Type Culture Collection and their colleagues have a new paper in PLOS One describing a novel lineage of proteobacteria which are dominant in iron-rich hydrothermal vent sites on the Loihi Seamount near Hawai'i. They form a unique morphological structure which could serve as a fossil biomarker.

NAI's Marine Biological Laboratory Team has a new paper in Science detailing aspects of population structure for microbial communities at two neighboring hydrothermal vents. Using environmental DNA sequencing techniques, they found the two populations reflect the geochemical conditions of each vent. [Source: NAI Newsletter]